


Now I'm The Wolf That's Yet To Howl

by pumpkinbloods



Series: aren't you curious? [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death, Character Study, Family Fights, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Hopeful Ending, I'm Sorry, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recovery, Spoilers, This too shall pass, endgame fucked me up and i need to write about it, this hurt to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 02:05:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18982996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinbloods/pseuds/pumpkinbloods
Summary: Morgan Stark would never know her father.





	Now I'm The Wolf That's Yet To Howl

**Author's Note:**

> hey!! I wrote this because I wanted to show Morgan grieving for Tony even though she never knew him. People kept saying how bittersweet it was but no. she doesn't have a father. I wanted to show the gaping hole in her life because of that. just some of her story. the title is from the song Howl by Jake Houldby. enjoy!!

She’s fourteen and she’s trying to sneak out of the apartment because her room is empty, her mother is out of town, and as much as she loves Michelle, as much as she loves Peter, the two people who are watching her, she doesn’t want to be there.

It’s been ten years. Feels longer. Feels shorter. Sometimes it feels like it’s happening to someone else.

* * *

 

She lost his voice first.

Sure, she has old voicemails, podcasts he guest-starred on, random dreams and the voice in the back of her head that sounds too much like his. But she lost it. She needed to hear his voice from videos, from audio clips, and that’s what bothered her the most. She couldn’t remember her own father’s voice. She couldn’t remember the way he soothed her after she got hurt, the raspy voice he sang to her in, the sing-song voice he called her for dinner in, all of it. It was gone. She couldn’t hear it anymore.

She lost his face next.

The way he smiled, the color of his eyes. The laugh lines, the way he frowned when she drew on the wall or threw tantrums. The panicked look in his eyes when she played hide and seek and it took him too long to find her or when she fell down and got scraped up and cried. The look he got on his face, all fond but sad when he looked at the framed photo of him and the boy she would later learn was Peter Parker in the kitchen.

She lost his touch last.

The hand on her forehead when she had a cold, the kiss on her cheek before bed. How he would hold her to his chest, tucking her face in his warm shoulder. Holding her at his side, her thin legs hanging around his waist. Grasping her hand in his as they did random daily activities. The goatee that he rubbed against her cheek when it grew out for a few days too long. And there was no way to get that back. No videos, no photos, no hallucinations.

She lost his touch, just like she lost his voice, just like she lost his face, just like she would slowly lose everything else about him because he was gone and she was still there and everyone would always be in a constant state of grief.

* * *

 

“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice asks as she moves to the guestroom window, the only window that was near the fire escape.

Morgan looks up and frowns, Michelle Jones, the girl Peter had been dating for the better part of nineish years, stood in the doorway of the room. Her hair was shorter and blondish now, she had it done the week before. She was wearing sweats and a jersey, frowning at Morgan who was halfway out of the room.

“Out?” Morgan suggested pathetically. Michelle crossed her arms and tilted her head, walking further into the guestroom of the small apartment.

 _God,_ she wished Happy didn’t go with mom. He would’ve understood more.

“Let me put on my shoes,” Michelle sighed. “We can go get ice cream or some shit.”

Michelle walked out of the room and Morgan threw her head back, sighing heavily. She just wanted to go _away._

* * *

 

They always asked her what she remembered.

On the rare occasions when Pepper Potts-Stark and Morgan Stark went out, for dinner or to the park, when the paparazzi got their attention, they always asked Morgan about her father.

Morgan didn’t know her father. But she was expected to.

She wasn’t known as Morgan Stark. She was known as Tony Stark’s daughter. By the time she was ten she knew what to wear to be unseen, she was homeschooled by tutors and she didn’t have many friends. She had some people she knew from family friends and people who had the same tutors and some neighbors she met when she was much younger.

They always asked her what she remembered. And she couldn’t say that she was slowly losing all of him. That it was falling apart, that the memories of Tony Stark were like a hole in a wall.

Adolescence was like a fist in the drywall of Morgan’s memories of her father. You can always try to cover it up, to patch it, fill in the blanks of time, but it’s never the same. Eventually, you just cover it up with a frame. Morgan covered it up with a photo of the father she would never get to know.

* * *

 

“So,” Michelle started, getting in the driver's seat of the car. She started the car and turned down the radio. “Are you gonna tell me why you were trying to sneak out?”

Morgan shrugged, looked out the window. “I dunno. Just felt like it."

“Don’t bullshit me, Morgan,” Michelle said, turning on her blinker. “Just tell me.”

There is nothing to tell, Morgan wanted to say. Nothing. My father is dead. My mother isn’t home. I’ve been mourning since my fifth birthday for a man I hardly knew, everything feels heavy and I haven’t gotten more than four hours of sleep in nearly three years.

I’m tired, Michelle. I wanna go to bed. Everything is so loud.

Instead, Morgan answered, “I just wanted out of the apartment.”

* * *

 

She pretends not to sob at night for the father she never knew. That she doesn’t watch these videos of her father when he fell and got back up. She pats her own cheek and tucks her own hair behind her ear. She wonders who will ever walk her down the aisle.

Her mother, Pepper, is amazing. She says I love you more than often and asks Morgan how she is feeling. Do you like your tutors? How are your classes? What do you want for dinner? Do you need a blanket? Should I get you some ginger ale? I love you, your father loved you-

 _Her father._ She is told her father loves her. Loved her. Past tense. As in he’s dead, gone, not alive anymore, out of air-

Morgan often thinks of all the ways she could tell someone, most people know, the moment they see the look in her eyes and hear her name. If she was a normal kid, with a normal family, if she wasn’t the daughter of Iron Man, if her life wasn’t attempted to be documented all the goddamn time, if she was just a normal fourteen-year-old with a fourteen-year-olds life, she would think how she would break it to her nonexistent friends' parents.

“Oh yeah, my dad died when I was little. A freak accident, you know how it is,” she would say with a wave of her hand and a slightly sad face. She would say freak accident because in this world her father wasn’t Iron Man, her father was an engineer who worked hard and died weirdly. Some project gone wrong. She could smile with watery eyes and excuse herself because in that universe she still had her father’s voice, his face, his touch, the memories, the drywall is not ruined and covered with a photo. In that universe, she asks her mother about her father. The things he liked and didn’t like. His friends. In that universe, everything is new and she is not Morgan Stark, daughter of Iron Man and Pepper Potts-Stark, the girl who knew tragedy like an old friend and cried for no reason at all. In that universe, she is Morgan Stark, daughter of Tony and Pepper Stark, her closest friend is a girl named Sammy with knotty hair and sweaty hands and Morgan would only cry when blood is involved.

In that universe, everything is different. But Morgan isn’t in that universe. She’s in this one. And there is no way to be Morgan Stark, daughter of Tony and Pepper Stark. She is Morgan Stark, daughter of Iron Man and Pepper Potts-Stark. She is Morgan Stark. Fucking Morgan Stark.

* * *

 

Morgan pokes at the cake in front of her, the milkshake with a tiny cherry on top of the whipped cream. Michelle sits in front of her at this twenty-four-seven diner with red booths and old music. It looked like something from a movie. From a 1950s black and white photo.

“Where were you gonna go?” Michelle asked pointedly, taking a drink from her tea.

Morgan shrugged, “the park, maybe.”

“You’re _fourteen._  You shouldn’t be going to the park, _alone,_ at _two_ am.”

Morgan shrugged again. There was nothing to say. Michelle sighed and leaned back in her booth. Morgan expected a lecture, small talk, random facts, the same things everyone said to her. _Your father loved you. It’s okay to mourn. You’re gonna be just fine._

“Where does it hurt?” Michelle asked, and Morgan wasn’t expecting that.

* * *

 

Morgan once found a photo of her grandfather, Howard Stark, buried a box in the attic. He’s not looking at the camera, he’s looking at the ground with an unreadable look in his eyes. He holds a glass of what Morgan assumed was scotch, he looked older than he was in the photo. The back of it had the date, had the name of the person in the photo (Howard, duh) and a quote.

_Stark’s are made of iron._

Morgan repeats this to herself like she repeats everything else. When the looks linger a second too long, when the photos seem a bit too real, when the songs are a little too loud, when the questions hit too close, when everything seems too much, she tells herself that.

_Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iron._

She framed the photo even though she’s been told more than once that her grandfather wasn’t the best man. She keeps it next to her closet, by all the other photos she has found in dusty boxes while exploring her parent’s lives before her.

The photo of her father sits next to her bed. She says _I love you 3000_ to it before lights out every night. She remembers that. She does. She looks back on it like she watches it on a movie screen. She hears herself say the words and sees her father smile. She remembers that. And she will fight everything in her path before she forgets that memory.

Her chest aches whenever she thinks about it. But she wipes away her tears, she takes a breath and clenches her jaw.

_Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iron._

* * *

 

“Everywhere,” Morgan answered solemnly.

Michelle nodded, looked away. She got this glazed look to her eyes, the one that Morgan’s mother got when she held that beaten up Iron Man mask that played that clip Morgan had never seen. Her mother said it was a few years before he died, said her father, Tony, made it when he was in a ship far, far away.

“How does it hurt?”

“I can’t remember him anymore,” Morgan told Michelle, voice small and hidden. “Everything aches.”

_Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iron. Stark’s are made of iro-_

“How do you think of him?” Michelle pondered, tilting her head, her short hair messy from interrupted sleep. Morgan rolled her eyes.

“I try to think of his voice, his face, his hand in mine, but I always. I always come up blank. I’ve forgotten,” Morgan whispered. Admitting it, out loud, was something she never wanted to do.

“Picture something specific,” Michelle said. “Any memory you can get a firm hold onto. Anything.”

Morgan closed her eyes.

* * *

 

It wasn’t _I love you 3000_. It was something different. Something that Morgan didn’t even realize she remembered.

She was laying on the grass, looking up at the sky. Her father stood over her, blocking her view of the clouds. He smiled, and she could see his face. Could remember all of it. Could remember the random tics, the laugh lines, the squint of his eyes. The crook of his smile, the smell of his cologne, the rough of his calluses. She could see him, clear as day, laying down next to her as she pointed at a cloud.

“It’s a puppy,” she had said, childish hand with dirty fingernails pointing at a cloud.

Before she could hear her fathers response, the waitress set a plate full of fries in front of Michelle and her voice was too loud.

* * *

 

“Anything else for you two?” the waitress asked, putting on a smile that wasn’t quite real.

Michelle shook her head and smiled thin-lipped, “nope. We’re good. Thank you.”

Morgan wiped her eyes with a sleeve of her shirt and looked away, playing with a silverware on the table. Michelle looked at Morgan with a look that Morgan had never seen before.

“You okay?” Michelle asked, dipping a fry in some ketchup.

“No,” Morgan slowly shook her head. “No. I’m not.”

* * *

 

When she was eight years old, Morgan cut off her pigtails because a boy told her she would be ugly without them.

Her mother tried to make her go and get the split edges fixed. And Morgan yelled and threw a tantrum until her mother sighed and hissed, _fine. Keep the hair._

Pepper would later say sorry, run a hand through Morgan’s ragged hair and smile. “You are so much like him,” she whispered softly with wet eyes.

Morgan had frowned, wrapping her slim arms around her mother’s waist. Her mother had laid her arms on Morgan’s shoulders, gently crying and Morgan tried to understand _why._

* * *

 

As she grows, she yells and screams less. She cries more, spaces out more, her grades aren’t as good as they could be. The boys avoid her, they all do. But that’s just what life is, Morgan guesses.

“Morgan,” Happy snaps her out of her daze. “Pepper’s going out of town, Harley has to work the graveyard shift so you’re staying with Peter and Michelle, that alright?”

Morgan nods, it’s not like she has a choice.

It’s fine. She loves MJ and Peter. They’re amazing and they care. But no one really understands. And if they do, they never say anything. She's not sure if she wants them to say something or not. 

* * *

 

“Can we go back to the apartment now?” Morgan asks quietly, there is nothing she wants to talk about anymore. Nothing she wants to eat. She just wants to go home.

Michelle pursed her lips and nodded, waving down the waitress for the check. She pays while Morgan walks to the doorway and pushes it open. The night air is refreshing in the way it never is and she can hear the streets of New York louder than ever.

“Dad,” she says to no one really. “Why’d you go?”

* * *

 

She and her mother fight once or twice, like all parents and teenagers do.

“You don’t even fucking care!”

“Morgan Stark! Don’t you _dare_ talk to me like that!”

Morgan threw her cup at the wall, apple juice splattered on the wall and floor. Her cup shattered. Morgan stomped past her mother, and ran up the steps. Pepper followed close behind her.

“Morgan!” Pepper yelled. _"_ _Morgan!"_

Morgan walked into her room and slammed the door. Opened it and slammed it again. Her mother yelled her name over and over and Morgan just screamed in return. She heard her father yelling at her in the back of her head.

So maybe it wasn’t like all fights between parents and teenagers.

“Morgan! Settle down! Take a damn breath!”

Morgan opened the door and slammed it again, some of the wood cracked. Then she opened it again and looked at her mother.

They both started to laugh.

* * *

 

“Morgan? You ready? Let’s go,” Michelle said, walking to the car. “C’mon.”

Morgan walked with Michelle to the car, getting into the passenger's seat of the car. She rolled down the window, listening to the sounds of New York. To the noise that would never be able to drown out everything in her head.

* * *

 

Harley walks in on a fight between Pepper and Morgan.

“I’m not going!” Morgan had yelled. “You can’t make me go!”

“Morgan Hope Stark!”

“I don’t fuckin-”

Harley had walked in then, backpack thrown over his shoulders and eyes wide. Standing in the doorway, looking at Pepper standing near the couch and Morgan on the stairs. “You guys okay?”

Pepper sighed and let her posture sag, Morgan let go of the railing and sat down on one of the steps. Morgan put the heels of her palms on her eyes and let out a few ragged breaths.

“How are you, Harley?” Pepper asked, voice small and loud at the same time.

“I’m okay,” he drawled out. “How are you two?”

Morgan lifted up her head, “y’know, we’ve been better, Harles.”

Harley laughed a little, and somehow the anger in the room shattered and Pepper and Morgan joined the laughter.

Every fight had been ending in laughter, lately.

* * *

 

Morgan goes to bed when they get back to the apartment. Murmmers goodnight to Michelle and walks to the guestroom. Morgan can feel Michelle’s eyes on her back as she shuts the door behind her.

She opens the window she didn’t realize was shut, and looks out of it. Frowning, she thinks of everything her father left behind.

* * *

 

Harley takes her shopping one time, leads her to the part of the store with plates and bowls and wine glasses and things you eat with, things in a kitchen.

“Go wild,” he says. “Choose whatever you want, it’s not like I’m paying.”

“What’s the point of this?” Morgan asks, looking at him lamely.

“It’s a surprise. Just go wild.”

Morgan sighed but grabbed a stack of plates and put them in the cart.

* * *

 

She wonders why he fought. Why he put up his life for others. Why didn’t he just be a normal person with a normal life who could have a normal child with a normal family?

“Why do you fight?” Morgan asks Peter one time. He furrows his brows and looks too confused for a simple question.

“Because,” he says. “They need us.”

And Morgan still doesn’t _understand._

* * *

 

Harley takes her to an empty warehouse and sets all the plates and glasses and bowls on the ground. Morgan looks around in confusion.

“What’s going on?” she asks, and Harley smiles. He picks up two plates and hands one to Morgan.

Then he throws is at the brick wall, the shatter echoes for a long time. Morgan stands shocked.

“What the fuck?”

“Throw it,” Harley urges. “It helps.”

And it does help. They spend the afternoon smashing plates and glasses and bowls. Sometimes it’s easier to destroy things than it is to talk about it. Sometimes.

* * *

 

The next morning, Harley picks Morgan up and they go back to the Stark’s household by the lake. She hugs Peter goodbye. But she doesn’t quite know what to say to Michelle. Michelle knows something that no one knows about Morgan. It’s scary, unnerving, lonely even if it’s not supposed to be.

“You okay?” Harley asks, pausing as Morgan walked to the steps up to her room.

“Yeah,” Morgan nods. “I’m just tired.”

* * *

 

They’re fighting again.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” her mother, her beautiful mother, yells.

“What do you want us to talk about?” Morgan shouts back.

“Your life!” Pepper yells. “Everything that’s been going on!”

Morgan just stared. Pepper broke.

“Sweetheart,” Pepper whispered, voice hoarse and dim. “What’s wrong?”

Morgan’s mouth flicked between a frown and smile, “I’m just tired.”

Pepper sat on the couch and covered her face in her hands, “that’s not even a word anymore. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. You can’t keep using that word and act like it will still have a meaning.”

* * *

 

If she thinks about him too hard, she hates him. Hates him more than anything.

He _left._ He made a whole fucking life and _left._

And she never even got to know him. It seems like everyone else got to know him besides _her._ She’s his daughter. But no. No one out there cares about that. Not really.

She’s angry. All the time. There is something deep inside her, buried under the surface, just waiting for the right moment to pop. To bloom and ruin everything.

And if Morgan is being honest, she’s waiting too. She wants to see who will stay. Because god knows her father didn’t.

* * *

  

The first time she lashes out on Happy, is when he’s telling her a story about her father. The same one she’s heard one too many times.

Something inside her snaps, not the anger but something else. Maybe the grief, maybe the loneliness, maybe the fact that she just needs _something. Anything._

“I don’t fucking care,” Morgan snaps. “I don’t care!”

She stands up from the table outside on the front porch, stomps over to the front door and swings it open. Storms to her room and slams the door behind her.

She takes everything off her bed, throws her comforter and pillows on the floor, strips the bed of sheets and chucks her stuffed animals at the wall. She curls into a ball on her bed and cries.

Who let this happen?

* * *

 

“How have you been feeling, Morgan?” the doctor asks from her chair. Morgan, who was sitting across from her in the table, playing connect four, shrugged.

“Like I always feel,” Morgan answered. Looking at the game in front of her, furrowing her brows. She was never good at this.

The doctor leaned forward and picked up a piece, “I think you’re missing something.”

Then she dropped the piece and made a perfect row of four. Complete. 

* * *

 

“He loved you,” Pepper whispers quietly. “He did. I know you won’t ever know him really, but he did. He loved you.”

Morgan spins around and looks at her mother, “how am I supposed to love him if I don’t know him?”

* * *

 

She watches the video he made for her before his death. Sneaks out onto the dock and plays it. His face and voice that she had forgotten in front of her.

She starts crying as he speaks. Her chest making ragged sobs, her eyes blurry with tears, her head aching from grief.

Her mother comes out at one point, rubs her back, as they watch the video together. The video ends but her sobs don’t. Morgan just cries and cries and cries until there is nothing left of her.

She looks over at her mother with foggy vision and shaking hands, her voice is firm.

“Where are his suits?”

* * *

 

She looks at his suits with wonder, touching them with curiosity. Her mother says that they could sell for millions. Her mother says that she will never sell them. Her mother says that the suits are not something to be sold.

“I wanna ruin one,” Morgan says. “I want to ruin one.”

Her mother nods. “Okay.”

* * *

 

Michelle says something to her before Mogan gets into the shower the next morning.

“You don’t have to forgive him,” she says softly, aware of Peter not even a room away and knowing Morgan is willing to slam the door on her. “But you need to forgive yourself.”

* * *

 

Pepper hands her a sledgehammer and a helmet and goggles. Morgan sets the hammer down next to her, straps on the helmet and makes the goggles comfortable enough.

The suit is rusty and dented. Pepper says it’s one of the ones that Tony finished but didn’t use. Morgan just nods.

The first swing is like taking a breath of air after being underwater for hours. It echoes in the room. Morgan chokes out a laugh. She turns toward her mother with a smile.

“Could you play some music?”

* * *

 

Pepper plays Chet Baker and Morgan doesn’t mind. It’s soothing, it’s on full volume so she can hear the piano and trumpet with every blow of the hammer. It’s amazing.

She stops and drops the hammer on the floor with a crash. The suit in front of her is damaged beyond repair, Chet Baker blasts throughout the room and she looks at her mother.

“I don’t wanna be like him,” Morgan declares. “I don’t wanna be Iron Man.”

Pepper nods, “you don’t have to be.”

“I’m going to save people.”

Pepper’s smile blooms across her face. “Of course, you will. You’re Morgan Stark.”

* * *

 

It's been longer than a while. 

Morgan learns. She grows. She forgives.

She will never know her father. She doesn’t get anything back, not his face or voice or touch. She will never be able to fully recall a memory with him. But that’s okay, she tells herself. That’s okay.

She’s okay.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all enjoyed!! kudos and comments warm my heart!!
> 
> [my tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hellotomyoldheart)
> 
> [my other tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/exlosers)


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